Thursday, October 9, 2008

STAR-TIDE's Mobile, Sustainable Power Solutions

Inspired in part by RMI's Amory Lovins, this is worth learning about, so please bear with me. Dr. Linton Wells, NDU Transformational Chair and Distinguished Fellow, and former Undersecretary of Defense for NII, briefed a small group of bloggers on Wednesday about an ambitious (and ambitiously named) program called STAR-TIDES. I'll spell it out for you. TIDES = Transportable Infrastructures for Development and Emergency Support. And TIDES is just one small part of a larger intiative called STAR, which = Sustainable Technologies, Accelerated Research. Besides NDU, other orgs involved on the US side include OSD and JFCOM. And yes there are other sides, because this program isn't just international, it's also cross service, cross agency (e.g., DOD, DHS) and cross cultural.

The energy aspect comes into play in its capacity to deploy in a variety of often-sustainable (e.g., solar, wind) mobile power configurations (small, medium, large) into stressed environments to help out folks in need. I'll be posting on this again, but for more info now please see the program's web site here, and if you want something more concrete, visit Fort McNair today or the Pentagon courtyard next week, where demonstration units on display. Key mobile power participants include Solar Stik and SkyBuilt Power.

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This blog tracks the energy challenges facing the US Department of Defense in the early 21st century. Drawing from the best thinking inside and outside the Pentagon, it examines problems and identifies possible short, medium and long term solutions in technology and policy.

Andy Bochman runs the DOD Energy Blog and can be reached at andybochman at gmail dot com